


Scars

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Series: What Ifs And Role Reversals [5]
Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Returns, Humor, I Don't Even Know, Multi, Natasha Feels, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Natasha Romanov, Protective Tony Stark, Slightly more modern setting, Tony Being Tony, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony was born later than the 70's, and natasha defected sooner, this may get a sequel im not sure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 12:43:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11691876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: Tony Stark’s parents die when he’s seventeen years old and he has no idea how to handle it. Normally he’d choose his normal method of dealing with things by drinking, drugs, sex, or work that’s consuming enough to distract him but he doesn’t have the energy for it. So instead of doing any of the normal things he did to distract himself he fucked around on the Internet.This is how he finds Natasha Romanov on a mission to wipe out the Red Room.Based offthisWinterIronWidow prompt.





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DearNymphadora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DearNymphadora/gifts).



> I'm not sure, I might give this a sequel I'm not too sure.
> 
> Warnings for some mild torture mentions.

Tony Stark’s parents die when he’s seventeen years old and he has no idea how to handle it. Normally he’d choose his normal method of dealing with things by drinking, drugs, sex, or work that’s consuming enough to distract him but he doesn’t have the energy for it. So instead of doing any of the normal things he did to distract himself he fucked around on the Internet. Firstly he learned that it was slow as hell so after working to improve that a little (a _lot_ ) he started digging deeper and deeper into things until he finds something interesting.

Obadiah doesn’t know about any of this of course and when he finds footage from an old warehouse facility of a woman taking on a literal army and methodically taking them all down with a shocking amount of efficiency he knows he’s hit the jackpot. He makes it something of an all-consuming mission to kind out who the woman is, what she was doing, and a way to contact her. He learns, after months of searching, that she’s referred to as the Black Widow, the Red Death, of the Slavic Shadow and that she’s very, very deadly. He also learns that she moves around a lot and in generally unpredictable ways and he needed to change that. So he starts tracking her online activity- something that was a real bitch to find because she knew how to cover her tracks efficiently. Not nearly as efficiently as he could but more than the average person would ever be capable of.

So he starts scrubbing up behind her, removing her trail through the web either totally or scrambling the information so hard no one would be able to figure out the pattern. Then he leaves her a message at her latest victim’s house. Some guy named Ivan that she’s been tracking for double the time she usually tracked for. Tony’s best guess was that it was personal this time and she wanted to get it right. When he doesn’t hear back he’s not surprised, but he does know that she’s checked the email he set up for her and he also knows she’s been double-checking his info. He found her pattern long ago- she was going after people who worked in a project labeled the ‘Red Room’ that, as far as Tony could tell, spent time conditioning and training children into soldiers to fight for whatever goal they had this week. Natasha, at his best guess, had been taken when she was twelve and defected when she was nineteen. Those were approximate guesses though, not that it mattered too much. Either way he was invested in helping now.

*

Natasha isn’t sure why or even how she defected, she just woke up one day and decided her life was her own and she was going to take it back. She had been someone else’s pawn for long enough. At first she’s only concerned with hiding from her former superiors but over time she notices small things about herself. The first thing she notices is that she can taste food. She isn’t sure why she didn’t before, but she discovers that she now has discriminatory taste buds. She finds that she had a love of cheese and wine but can’t stand the sour flavor of vinegar. She also learns that she has a fondness for movies after one night of boredom and an overheard conversation draws her to a theater. At first she dislikes action movies because they weren’t realistic but then she begins to see the enjoyment in such absurd movies. So she goes and sees more, drawn to them out of curiosity and because she could enjoy the freedom of making her own choice.

It’s in the middle of a movie theater regarding some spy movie about taking revenge that she gets the idea. Of course she had completely defected by then- she wasn’t to have a real personality before all this- but it never occurred to her to take revenge against her captors. Real life was nothing like a movie of course but she slowly starts to compile all the information she had on every single one of the Red Room agents she ever came into contact with. The list is long but she eventually has everything down on paper so she begins to track them.

Her first kill is in London and she remembers the man well. He once said she had the most potential of all the Widows but that she had a strong will that needed to be crushed and crush it he did. She crushed his skull to pay him back for that. She considers leaving one of those crazy messages all the people in movies always did but she decides against it for two reasons. One, that would give away her identity and that was foolish at best, and two, it was far scarier to lay awake at night wondering if you were next. These people forced her to do horrible things and did horrible things to her. She used to lay awake at night wondering if or when she was going to be forced into something she wanted nothing to do with again, knowing she had no choice, and she wanted these people to feel that fear too. She wanted them to _suffer_.

Her next target was a woman that once tortured her for hours to teach her how to handle the pain without breaking. Natasha repays the favor, making sure to draw it out longer than necessary and ironically the woman talks at a pain threshold that was far below the one Natasha would have talked at. Actually Natasha wouldn’t talk at all no matter how much pain she was in. The woman’s information was good though so Natasha makes sure to thank her before she shoots her in the head. For all the training she was put through it seemed rather unfair that the people who trained her weren’t as good as she was. It was almost easy, picking them off like that.

The next target she finds isn’t until months later due to being a high-ranking official in the organization that funded the Red Room. He wasn’t going to be easy to get to but she plans everything methodically, watching him for some time to learn his patterns as well as the patterns of the guards that surrounded him in preparation. Then, finally, she makes her move. As anticipated it takes work to get through his guards but she eventually makes it to Ivan he looks surprised. “Natashka,” he says, frowning. “You’re showing your face,” he tells her in a disappointed tone.

Of course she knows why he’s disappointed and she can’t help but laugh, “its cute that you think I’m letting you live after this,” she says even though she doesn’t find it cute at all. But people in the movies said things like that during the villain banter scenes so she supposes it’s expected of her.

Ivan smiles, “I thought you were coming back to apologize. Killing my guards is a good way to show that you’re still as capable as I thought you were,” he says.

“I killed your guards because I wanted to get to you so I could kill you too,” she says. She’s confused on how he came to any other conclusion, that just didn’t make sense to her.

“Now Natashka, that’s not very nice,” he admonishes lightly. “Besides, we both no that you don’t have it in you to kill-” he doesn’t finish his sentence because Natasha has shot him in the head. She’s seen the movies where the hero- her by virtue of being less horrible of Ivan- put the gun down as if the villain was right in saying they couldn’t kill them even if they’ve killed dozens of others before the villain. But Natasha wasn’t a hero so she shoots Ivan for suggesting she was weak. She was _not_ weak.

Ivan got the attention of all the wrong- or maybe all the right- people. There were ongoing investigations as to who killed him and took out his entire team but Natasha doesn’t fall under suspicion. It’s the attention of someone _else_ that catches her attention. She almost misses the blinking message on Ivan’s computer but when she reads it her blood chills fast. Then she reads it again and once more to make sure she understood the message.

_Hey Widow. Don’t freak out, I’m a friend. Next target: Grigor Pchelintsov. He’s the one who made the training for the Black Widow program._

The message also includes some details on Pchelintsov as well as an email address. Natasha commits all the information to her memory before moving to erase all traces of the message. When she goes to do that though the computer seems to do the work itself and she watches in shock as well as a little fear as any electronic footprint the message made is erased. She decides that this person, the one who has found her, is a person she needs to learn more about immediately.

Luck was not on her side in finding her shadow, but she does check the email (not on any computer she intended to be near for longer than the few minutes to check it of course) and finds a small note in her inbox with more details on Pchelintsov and another hello. It erases itself as soon as she clicks out of the message. Beyond that she was unable to find anything to trace her shadow back to anyone or anything. The information was far too scrambled and after a few hours worth of trying she recognizes that she’s out of her depth. That doesn’t mean she was giving up on finding her shadow, it just meant she needed to see what else her shadow did so she could gather information on them. In the meantime she double-checked all the information her shadow got on Pchelintsov.

None of the information was false and in some cases the information her shadow got indicated that they did far more digging than strictly necessary. She did more digging of course before she planned her move. Pchelintsov never saw his fate coming and likely wasn’t pleased that his training wasn’t as solid as he thought it was. She could have asked but she’s decided the scenes in movies where the heroes talk to villains are useless so she just kills him right away.

She also finds another message from her shadow with another name and a brief congratulations on her success. The message was slightly less personal than the last but that was no matter to her. Right now this shadow seemed intent on helping her and until she can gather enough information to find this shadow she might as well use what she was being given. This message reacts the same as the fist, erasing by itself as soon as she tried to remove it herself.

*

Natasha was one paranoid spider. She never checked her email at computers she’d use more than once, she always seemed intent on trying to trace him back- something that wasn’t possible for almost all of the population, and she always double-checked his information. She did follow the trails he left though, and a few of her own when tracing information on the targets Tony fed her was taking longer than normal to acquire. They have a one-way relationship for months before Natasha stops trying to trace him. It isn’t exactly a real effort of communication but the message was clear- she trusted him enough to stop trying to find him. For her that was impressive so Tony thought he’d kick their involvement up a notch.

Next time he sends her a name he also sends her an address. He knows she shows up there because JARVIS tells him, he also knows she spends hours staking it out and making sure it wasn’t some kind of trap. When she finds her fancy new weapon (one fitting of a Widow) she takes it and scurries out quickly, disappearing electronically for nearly three whole weeks before he finds her again. Except it’s because she killed some politician in France that turned out to have some pretty nasty connections to the Red Room once Tony did his digging. He also knows the weapon he made her was used because nothing else would cause blast patterns like that. He almost laughs when he gets a consultation job to figure out what it was that caused those scorch marks on the wall but he plays dumb and goes back to being a rich teen.

Natasha doesn’t contact him but he does leave little messages in her email regularly. He also gives her names and addresses so she can go and pick up the upgrades he gave her. Obadiah also starts pulling him back into business, telling him it was time he learned how to run things at SI since he was set to take over in a couple years. Maybe to normal people it was difficult to manage having a secret life where they helped out a super-spy take out bad people but Tony has always been an over achiever so he learns to manage it all easily even if he probably loses more sleep than what’s healthy.

*

The first weapon she got from her shadow had freaked her out. She had cased out the address for hours before she decided it was acceptable to enter though she was still cautious. They almost looked like bracelets but the note that came with them said ‘ _Widow’s Bites ;)’_. There was seriously a winking face on it. Instructions also came with the bites though it was in a code. She had gotten out of there fast but once she was safely stowed away in her ratty hotel room she smiles. She’s always liked puzzles and she knew she had an aptitude for solving problems; her scores were always very good when she was tested on these things in the Red Room. So she sets about solving the code to get the instructions to the bites.

As soon as she figures it out she burns the paper she used to work the code out and eyes the weapons, still not trusting them fully. She had a new target though so when she goes to his house she forces him to test out a few of the settings on the bites before using them herself. There were no adverse affects so she strips the politician of the bites immediately and uses them to kill her latest victim. She was going to like these, she could feel it.

For months she and her shadow exchange messages and upgrades. Well, her shadow gives her messages and upgrades and she takes them. The next upgrade after the bites was a new outfit with the most absurd note she’s ever gotten from _anyone_.

_Here’s a sexy little cat suit for you ;). Also it’s bullet proof_

_-The Mechanic_

She had resisted wearing the absurd looking suit but eventually curiosity drives her to test out the outfit. As it turned out the suit was tight but extremely practical. The material was tough but it didn’t under her movement, there were several pockets all over the outfit though they were mostly located on her belt, and when she zipped up the front of the suit it did a decent job compressing her breasts. Useful addition, that, given how often they could get in the way of her job. And there were none of those absurd breast cups that were used on women in movies. She had to wonder if the creators of shows and movies knew that if you had one of those ridiculous things on and you fell on your chest it would crush your damn breast bone. Not to mention if you were fighting with a blade there was a fifty-fifty chance the blade would hit the plate and slide _towards_ the breast bone instead of away. All in the name of looking attractive.

Needless to say that, joking aside, she was happy her shadow knew how to make protective gear for those who happened to be well endowed in the chest area. When she tests out the suit on her next target she’s happy to learn that her freer range of movement made killing her targets far easier.

She continues to make her way through her targets and get her upgrades, slowly letting her guard down with her shadow. It had been almost two years before she ran into anything suspicious and it wasn’t even from her shadow, it was from a man she ran into while killing another in the seemingly endless stream of Red Room operatives. They notice each other right away and when they try to question each other it goes badly as they trade blows but they do eventually gather that they’re there to kill the same woman so they end up leaving each other be for the moment and killing their target before slipping out unnoticed.

*

Tony is just taking over Stark Industries when he gets an email at a party to celebrate his taking over. When he sees that it’s _Natasha_ he excuses himself and makes his way to a more private section of his penthouse more out of shock than anything. She never contacted him. He quickly scans over her words about running into someone else on this particular mission and frowns. That was more than a little unusual so he makes a more permanent excuse for his absence and leaves the party so he could properly investigate.

The man- Tony never does find his name- starts to appear regularly on Natasha’s missions and he had to wonder why that was. Natasha was getting more insistent on answers so he starts running facial recognition on the man, pulling him up at several other locations through an impossible span of history. Tony has a brief ‘that’s impossible’ moment before he decides to investigate some other things.

When he was drunk Howard liked to talk. Tony never paid much attention to it because it was all nonsense about super soldiers and Captain America but that was all comic book stuff that was used as war propaganda, not real stuff. Or so Tony thought. Upon investigation into Howard’s records, and then investigation into _those_ records, and then investigation into some stuff the government almost certainly wanted to keep him out of he discovers it’s all fucking real. When Howard was drunk he spouted off about classified information holy _shit_. Tony might not find any information on who the man was that was following Nat around but he does gather that the organization he was after was HYDRA, which sometimes connected with the Red Room, and he looked a lot like James Barnes so Tony nicknames him James.

He sends all this and everything he has on Captain America over to her along with James’ impossibly long history with no real expectations of a response. Natasha had contacted him because she needed information, he didn’t think the contact would continue even if he wanted it to. He was more than a little curious about a woman that capable of murder who had accepted his help without ever really knowing him.

Luckily for him he gets his wish and Natasha contacts him.

 _Thank you. We have made contact three times looking to kill the same doctor this time. I am going to attempt more permanent contact. Wish me luck_.

He sends her a message that simply reads _luck_ and continues on with his work.

*

James, her shadow had nicknamed him, was an absolute pain in her ass. He kept getting in her way so with the information that he was supposedly a senior citizen she goes in to make contact in a more… lasting way. “You’re too predictable,” she tells him as he watches their doctor through the scope of a sniper rifle. He’s been there for hours lying on that rooftop doing nothing but watching, just like he has all week. The shot has been clear this whole time; she didn’t know why he didn’t take it.

“Or I’m waiting for someone,” he says and removes his eyes from the target to look at her.

“For what purpose?” she asks.

“We have the same goal and I could use the help. You’re competent,” he tells her.

She’s surprised to find herself shaking her head, “I already have a partner.” The statement is true of course, but she didn’t expect to feel inexplicably attached to her shadow. It felt almost like… betrayal to take another partner even though that was sort of what she had intended with making contact. No, she realizes, she intended to tell this James to go away. She didn’t like him messing with her and her shadow.

This gets James’ attention though and he looks surprised. “There’s no evidence for that,” he says.

“That’s because we’re not stupid,” she mumbles. “I don’t need another partner, I need you to stay away from my targets,” she tells him.

“No. This one used to torture me for fun, I think. I intend to make her suffer for that,” he says in a dark voice.

“Might want to stock up on insulin then, she’s diabetic,” Natasha tells him, surprising him.

“How did you know that?” he asks.

She smiles back in a way that was more pompous than humorous, the way she imagined her shadow would talk if all those absurd notes were any indication. “Because I’m competent at my job and so is my partner.” Sometimes she got information that was completely useless to the mission but she sort of liked the inclusion of the target’s astrological sign with some random blurb about their bad luck because Mercury was in a bad place for their sign this week. The result? Instant death.

James looks back through his scope, “thanks for the tip. Leave this one to me and I’ll consider leaving you alone,” he tells her.

Natasha shakes her head, “no. You’ll leave me alone regardless because I don’t need your help, I have help,” she says, standing back up and walking off.

James doesn’t leave her alone. If anything he seems to be present more often and her shadow gets back to her with more information, telling her that HYDRA- a remnant Nazi organization from World War Two- had reported the Winter Soldier missing. This message was accompanied by a large swath of information on the Winter Soldier. She reads over the information and sends back a joke about soldiercicles and bad code names that must make her shadow laugh because she gets a message back complimenting her shitty pun humor. From base interactions with people who were not her shadow she had learned that her love of puns was not necessarily the preferred humor style of the population. They were missing out.

She continues to get interruptions from James until finally, after fighting each other more than their current target, she gets annoyed. “What do you even want?” she snaps at him.

“I told you,” James says, “a partner.”

“And I told you,” she says through gritted teeth, “that I already have one.”

“Then let me in on it. You know I’m good, I keep sniping your targets,” he says.

Natasha rolls her eyes, “you do not _snipe_ my targets, you find them and continue hunting them even though I got here first. You’re a _poacher_ not a sniper.”

James gets this sort of hazy look on his face and Natasha recognizes it instantly and wonders what he’s remembering. “I think I might have been a sniper once. A good one,” he murmurs.

“Must be why they took you in. I still don’t want to work with you,” Natasha tells him. James doesn’t listen because he is, apparently, a lost dog in need of a home. And a lot of their targets were double dipping in agencies. In James’ defense according to her shadow he was only after HYDRA agents, it just happened that a lot of her targets were also HYDRA agents. She starts making her kills more efficient and cleaner rather than taking her time with the actual killing in an attempt to lose James and it almost works too.

It isn’t until she’s after a man by the name of Baron Zemo that things go sideways. She had no idea James had trigger words. She did too but her shadow had long since found them for her. She had a device she carries around with her that would prevent her from hearing anything but white noise should she ever need the help. So far so good but she’s always erred on the side of caution so she had it on her at all times.

Lucky for James that she happened to be in the vicinity when Zemo starts with the words. For the first three words she was unsure of what was happening but by the end of the fourth word she was already in the house James was now trapped in trying to fight his conditioning and by the time Zemo was on the sixth word she had attached her white noise device on James and kicked the small red book out of Zemo’s hands. The man put up a good fight but Natasha was infinitely more skilled than him and in the end his demise was easy.

When she turns back to James he’s kneeling on the ground gasping for air as he tried to gather his bearings. Natasha grabs the book from the floor and walks back over to Bucky, wincing at the noise bubble she walked into, and turns off the small device. “Oh thank god, that thing is annoying,” he says, leaning forward and to her surprise into her.

She pats him awkwardly on the back and mumbles ‘there, there’ because that’s what they said in the movies.

*

Tony learns that Natasha has brought James in more permanently and Tony has to roll his eyes when _James_ tries to back hack him. It doesn’t work because he made sure to obscure himself but he does have to admit he’s proud of Natasha for getting further than James did. They both start communicating with him regularly and it was _weird_. James was bland at first, not at all engaged in the conversation and almost always spoke because he had some kind of intent behind his words. Natasha had done the same when she finally started speaking to him.

Now Natasha had crawled out of her shell but Tony thinks it’s because James forced her out. She sends him regular complains about James’ habits up to and including his face hair in the sink, his not washing his laundry as much as he needed to, and his tendency to burn food and not care. Tony learns that Natasha has very particular food tastes so he starts leaving her grocery gift cards with her regular upgrades and nothing for James because he kept leaving his face hair in the sink. Which is exactly what he left on the note he set on Natasha’s new suit and some upgraded weapons designed to fit her grip exactly.

James expressed his displeasure at this so Tony told him to stop leaving his face hair everywhere and to take a damn cooking lesson. He gets an amusing report from Natasha that James actually _does_ these things with a picture of her excited face. He’s shocked that she’d do that, it was more risky than anything she’s ever done before and she even worked to avoid the ever increasing amount of security cameras everywhere. When he comments on it she points out that the emails automatically destroy themselves and that he seemed to be impossible to hack. He supposes that was true and settles for it mostly because he started receiving all sorts of pictures from Natasha with annoyed faces and amusing captions expressing her annoyance with James.

To be fair James starts sending them as well once he starts to get an actual personality. Sometimes there were pictures of James being annoyed at Natasha with Natasha taking a picture in the background, which was all the more hilarious. Their most popular argument was food. James, once he started tasting food again- something Natasha also reported happened to her, had very different food tastes from Natasha. For one he liked vinegar on his fries, which Natasha decided was a sin against the world’s higher powers. James had been enthused to learn that Tony was an atheist so he used it against Natasha, who had relented and told him offending her senses was the same thing.

Tony finds himself looking forward to the email threads more than he usually did because it was more than business now, even if he never really gave much personal information to them. At least not the kind of information they could find him using. They knew generic things like what music he listened to, that he loved Italian food though they didn’t know he was Italian, they also knew about his tech abilities, and of course neither of them could miss his sense of humor. But none of that was traceable to just _him_. It wasn’t like they could pin down the identity of a person with the knowledge that they liked eighties music, Italian food, was good with tech, and had a sense of humor. Even if they figured out that he liked Italian food because he’s Italian there had to be thousands of Italians who fit all the other stuff.

His tech ability was what mostly gave away his identity but even then neither of them put it together. The closest guess they got was the time James decided he was _obviously_ Justin Hammer, which _no_! He had been deeply offended and refused to speak to James for a week while he groveled through the emails. Natasha found the whole thing hilarious and encouraged James’ silent treatment.

*

Natasha and James were working on figuring out who their shadow was but in the meantime they had other work. They didn’t always get the same targets so their work often took them in different directions, which was sometimes lonely now that Natasha has grown to not be annoyed of James’ presence, but it had to be done. She and James had been _shocked_ when their shadow had bought them several properties, nicknaming the properties the ‘Widow’s Web’ and they were all around the world. To make their work easier, their shadow had said, they had homes to go to when they were in between jobs, investigating, or just in the area. They also received a joint bank account that had a _massive_ amount of money in it.

They had been living off of odd jobs they’d taken, pickpocketing, or other methods of stealing things for quick cash but neither of them had to do that anymore so they were _enthused_. Of course they tried to trace all that stuff back to someone but they kept hitting all sorts of electronic blocks that mostly had amusing messages for them when they fell into the coded traps their shadow had set up. They had both pondered if they should be suspicious of this but both decided they’ve been working with the shadow- or The Mechanic as the shadow liked to call themself- long enough to know that nothing bad was likely to come of this.

So they continue on like normal, getting names, tracking their targets, and killing them in increasingly cool gear with increasingly cool weapons. They were as efficient as they were interesting so Natasha didn’t complain about the shadow’s obvious penchant for the dramatic. And she was also enthused to find that James got his very own cat suit, also with a note about being sexy. He had rolled his eyes but Natasha had doubled over laughing at the message that was almost a complete replica of her own, winking face and all.

It isn’t until eight months after they receive the Widow’s Web and the bank account that their shadow goes AWOL. For the first month it’s strange but not entirely unusual- sometimes the shadow got busy. But then month two hits and they’ve been trying to back hack everything the shadow has sent them from the beginning but they weren’t getting anywhere but to those god damn amusing messages that they constantly hit when they followed the code into traps.

“Something is wrong,” James tells her, running his hands through his long hair. “I can feel it.”

She nods, “me too. But we don’t know who the shadow is.”

They continue to look out of frustration, pulling together everything they know about the shadow but it’s all too vague. Hell, _Natasha_ had a sense of humor, like eighties music and Italian food, and was good with tech even if she wasn’t _that_ good. None of that was helpful. The best they had was that the shadow must be rich with connections but even then their list wasn’t narrowed. For all they knew their benefactor had someone else handling the tech and weapons and they were only running to operation here.

Nothing seems to be clicking until they were in the middle of the second month their shadow was missing and a news report comes on. “James,” she says as the pieces all fall into place. “James watch the news.”

He turns and looks at the television in one of the many houses in the Widow’s Wed- all of them came furnished- and his eyes widen in shock. “It fits,” he whispers as the news report continues on the search party that had been put together for Tony Stark being called off. He was presumed dead but Natasha knows that’s not true. She would know if her shadow had been killed and she thinks James would know too even if he’d been working with the shadow- Tony- for less time.

“We need to find him,” she says and James gives a curt nod as they both head in opposite directions, already knowing what the other was going to do.

*

Tony wasn’t sure how long he’d been in those caves, just that it have been more than long enough for people to stop looking. He wonders about Rhodey and how he was handling all of this and, of course, he wondered about James and Natasha. Were they okay? Did they have enough money? What would happen to them if he died in here? Rhodey had a life with the military, friends, family; all of that stuff but all Natasha and James had was each other and him. What happened when they ran out of money? Would they be okay if they didn’t get his upgrades? Would they be safe?

When Yinsen asks him if he has any family he considers it for a long time before he speaks. “A couple people but they don’t really know me all that well. I’ve got a best friend but he’s got his own life, he can’t sit around to hold my hand,” he says even if he sometimes selfishly wished Rhodey would.

Yinsen shakes his head, “a man with everything and nothing. What point is there to having everything you could ever ask for and even more when you have no one to share it with? When you get back you find your family, take care of them,” he says and Tony nods very seriously because that was exactly what he was going to do. He’s been hiding himself from his charges for too long and for stupid reasons. Who cared if they knew who he was? What did that really matter now?

It takes a long time to plan his escape and _fuck_ that computer was slow but he manages. Unfortunately managing meant that Yinsen had sacrificed himself. There was no other way to view it- he knew he’d die as soon as he left that cave and Tony didn’t deserve sacrifice like that. Not after what he’s done. Before he dies Yinsen tells him not to waste his life and Tony intends to always remember that. Yinsen wouldn’t die for nothing; Tony would never desecrate his memory like that.

*

Rhodey had no fucking clue who these two randos were but they both claimed to be expert trackers who have been working with Tony for years. He accepts their help because he was no longer in a position to turn them down after almost three months.

To his surprise they’re more than good, they turn out leads where he had none though they were both quick to tell him his work was instrumental in finding the leads. The guy with the metal arm (which okay, _what_?) went as far as to say that without Rhodey they never would have gotten a general location for Tony. They had three areas to check and Rhodey… he didn’t think he’d get clearance for his investigation but his superiors liked him enough to okay it so they went.

The first two spots turn up empty so by the time they’re headed to the third he has no real hope left. This was it, if Tony wasn’t here there was nowhere else to look, nowhere else to go. Tony would be _gone_. He didn’t want to accept that but he had to deal with the facts no matter how much he didn’t like them. That’s when the explosion goes off and they fly towards it because Rhodey _knows_. Those Natasha and James people must know Tony too because they immediately hone in on the explosion like he did.

They find Tony in the sand with a shirt wrapped around their head and Rhodey could crush him in a hug he was so happy to see him. Tony hugs him back though weakly thanks to his being highly dehydrated, sporting a hole in his chest, and sunburnt half to death and that’s just what Rhodey could see.

*

James and Natasha weren’t sure how to tell Tony. In investigating his disappearance they found some… _stuff_. They quickly learn they have no choice but to say something when Tony wants to fly back to America immediately to change his entire company and a half a dozen other things that would put him way too close to Obadiah Stane.

“You two need to get out of my way. I was happy to see you but I won’t stay that way long if you don’t move. The. Fuck. Over,” he tells them with heavy emphasis and fire in his eyes. Natasha had to marvel over how strong he was. She had years and years of training to handle pain like he had without flinching. And yet here was an ordinary citizen who had survived open-heart surgery with nothing but _Aspirin_ to dull the pain. It was all the terrorists were willing to give.

“Tony,” she starts but he goes to just shove her out of the way so he could… she had no idea. Do something to get back to America she guessed but she quickly grabs his shoulders and tosses him into a chair hard enough that he flails a little before James catches him, preventing him from falling on his ass. “I’m not trying to stop you from going home without good reason so shut your mouth and listen to me,” she snarls with a surprising amount of emotion in her voice.

It surprises Tony too because he doesn’t talk, which was something she learned he did a lot of. “Your business partner was the one who did this,” James says softly. He was better at these things than she was, she learned.

Tony looks shocked, “ _what_? How is that even possible? Obi couldn’t have done this,” Tony says, shaking his head in denial.

James gently squats beside him, “you know how thorough we are in our investigations, Tony. He staged an assassination with the Ten Rings but when they found out it was _you_ they decided you were too valuable to kill like he asked so they kept you. He… he’s also been selling your weapons to… well everyone,” James says and Tony lets out a small, pained noise at this. He doubles over and James gently reaches out to rub his back.

“That isn’t all,” Natasha says in a soft voice.

“How the hell could that not be all?” Tony asks. His eyes are wet and he’s blinking rapidly, like he’s trying not to cry.

She exchanges a look with James and he sighs, “Tony he had your parents killed. I think… I think maybe he thought he could control you but when you started expanding your interests outside of his and not giving up control of the company,” James shrugs.

Tony is absolutely devastated but she and James exchange a look. They knew what to do with people like Stane.

*

The death of Obadiah Stane was a shock to everyone but Tony. It looked like a heart attack and Natasha ensured him that no one would ever guess what really happened. He didn’t doubt her abilities nor did he doubt James’.

Tony runs a press conference as soon as Stane is dead announcing that he’s changing the direction of the company and shutting down weapons production for good. People lose their collective minds but he doesn’t care, he was redoing everything the way it should be. Natasha and James were also extremely helpful to him. They had been gracious enough to track down weapons for him and eliminate the terrorists he didn’t after they spent time training him. It was his mess, he insisted, so he should be the one to clean it up.

They refused to let him do it alone though and also tried their best to insist that he resume his previous role as the guy behind the screens but Tony was tired of sitting behind some kind of excuse not to get involved. So he does all his usual work, trains with either James or Natasha, and helps them take out terrorists whenever he had the extra time.

Pepper was starting to catch on but she was too busy running all the press coverage on his new clean energy initiative to call him on it.

**Author's Note:**

> [My writing Tumblr](https://tenspencerriedplease.tumblr.com/)


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